World Gone Madoff

Good piece from Krugman. His explanation on the madness is definitely part of the story:

Think of the way almost everyone important missed the warning signs of an impending crisis. How was that possible? How, for example, could Alan Greenspan have declared, just a few years ago, that “the financial system as a whole has become more resilient” — thanks to derivatives, no less? The answer, I believe, is that there’s an innate tendency on the part of even the elite to idolize men who are making a lot of money, and assume that they know what they’re doing.

The obvious solution is to cast a deeply suspicious eye on people who do make A LOT OF MONEY, particularly people such as Wall Street bankers who are not selling any useful product and simply move money around, because they are PROBABLY stealing a lot of the money. There are certainly more-or-less "legitimate" ways of making of lot of money. But in general, society needs to heavily scrutinize those who accumulate a lot of wealth-- NOT LIONIZE THEM!

There's also another part of this accumulating/stealing money issue that has to do with deep conspiracy and the nature of evil. I will be posting a very important piece on evil from the Anonymous Physicist this weekend. Stayed tuned!

Speaking of evil-- here is some highly disturbing evil manifesting as racism during the Katrina catastrophe in 2005.